I up-voted an answer, and then someone left a comment proving that the answer was in fact incorrect, so I redacted my vote. I was actually a bit surprised that I was allowed to because it had been awhile, and we all know how nit-picky SO is about these things. Later I refreshed the page and noticed he had amended his answer and wanted to up-vote him again. Not allowed it says!

I'm guessing what happened is that when I went to redact my up-vote he had already edited his answer, but I didn't refresh the page, so I didn't actually see his edit. So my redact counted as a vote on the newly edited answer, which nullified my future vote.

There was a previous case similar to this wherein someone made a vote, and an edit happened during the 5 minute window that even though the vote should've been safe to retract, it ended up as a permanent retraction, thus needing a new edit.
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Grace Note♦Nov 19 '10 at 21:47

...okay, that previous comment might be misleading. If it wasn't clear, the 5 minute window I'm referring to is the voting window. The edit was a recorded one, just an ill-timed one that basically appeared to have cut the user's vote retraction window away.
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Grace Note♦Nov 19 '10 at 22:14

I'm not sure the new feature would actually help in the specific case described above. What it seems to me happened to Mark was something like this chain of events: 1) Mark upvotes. 2) Comment posted. 3) Mark and OP see comment. 4) OP edits. 5) Mark downvotes (without refreshing, and so without seeing the edit.) 6) Five minutes pass. 7) Mark refreshes page, sees edit and tries to upvote, but can't, because his downvote actually happened after the last edit.
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Ilmari KaronenApr 8 at 11:00

1

Anyway, fortunately, we do nowadays get notified by Ajax if a post we're reading is edited. You just have to remember to click the "reload edited post" banner before voting to see what you're actually voting for / against.
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Ilmari KaronenApr 8 at 11:01

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@IlmariKaronen: Indeed. So with the combination, the problem should be fixed. (whatever the actual issue was)
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Patrick HofmanApr 8 at 11:02

Ilmari is right, this does sound like a different situation. I think the ajax notifications largely nullify this problem though. I still think you shouldn't be allowed to vote without refreshing the answer though.
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MarkApr 8 at 17:00

I'm guessing what happened is that when I went to redact my up-vote he had already edited his answer, but I didn't refresh the page, so I didn't actually see his edit. So my redact counted as a vote on the newly edited answer, which nullified my future vote.

Well shouldn't it inform me when I try to vote on something that has changed since I loaded the page then? "This answer has been edited since you loaded the page. Would you like to refresh it?" And then it won't let you vote until you refresh it.
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MarkNov 20 '10 at 5:34

@mark we would somehow have to track the time you last loaded each individual page; feels like a lot of work for a fairly rare edge condition
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Jeff Atwood♦Nov 20 '10 at 6:37

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Include timestamp when page is loaded, javascript to send timestamp to server with the vote, server compares with timestamp of last edit, sends back an OK or an error. I'd be more worried about the added computational load than the developer work.
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Nicholas KnightNov 20 '10 at 13:26